An embodied cognitive science?

Andy Clark
1999 Trends in Cognitive Sciences  
Tal k of embodiment and situatedness has become increasingly frequent in philosophy 1-5 , psychology 6,7 , neuroscience 8,9 , robotics 10,11 , education 12-14 , cognitive anthropology 15,16 , linguistics 4,17 , and in dynamical systems approaches to behavior and thought 18, 19 . There is clearly a shift in thinking but the nature and importance of the shift is surprisingly hard to pin down. What is 'embodied cognitive science' and how far can it take us? Let us look first at some of the varied
more » ... oles that embodiment can play, as illustrated in the following examples. Fish Consider first the swimming ability of the Bluefin tuna. The Bluefin tuna is a swimming prodigy, but its aquatic capabilities -its ability to turn sharply, to accelerate quickly, and to reach such high speeds -have long puzzled biologists. Physically speaking, so it seemed, the fish should be too weak (by about a factor of seven) to achieve these feats. However, an explanation for this prodigious ability can be found in the use of embodied, environmentally embedded action by the tuna. Fluid dynamicists have suggested that the fish uses bodily action to manipulate and exploit the local environment (the water) so as to swim faster, accelerate more quickly, and so on 20 . It appears that the tuna find and exploit naturally occurring currents so as to gain speed, and use tail flaps to create additional vortices and pressure gradients, which are then used for rapid acceleration and turning. The physical system whose functioning explains the prodigious swimming capacities of the Bluefin tuna is thus the fish-as-embedded-in, and as actively exploiting, its local environment. Andy Clark The last ten years have seen an increasing interest, within cognitive science, in issues concerning the physical body, the local environment, and the complex interplay between neural systems and the wider world in which they function. Yet many unanswered questions remain, and the shape of a genuinely physically embodied, environmentally embedded science of the mind is still unclear. In this article I will raise a number of critical questions concerning the nature and scope of this approach, drawing a distinction between two kinds of appeal to embodiment: (1) 'Simple' cases, in which bodily and environmental properties merely constrain accounts that retain the focus on inner organization and processing; and (2) More radical appeals, in which attention to bodily and environmental features is meant to transform both the subject matter and the theoretical framework of cognitive science. A. Clark is at the Philosophy/ Neuroscience/ Psychology (PNP) Program, Washington University in St Louis, USA. tel: +1 314 935 7146
doi:10.1016/s1364-6613(99)01361-3 pmid:10461197 fatcat:beml7lwvfrecnhdr6kaua26ene